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TES: The largest network of teachers in the world
Portions not contributed by visitors are Copyright 2018 Tangient LLC
TES: The largest network of teachers in the world
Overview
Chapter 1 introduces the problem of students' difficulty with reading and explains how this is an opportunity for improving instruction.Quotes
"Teachers' concerns...center on the fact that many of their students have difficulty dealing with academic texts, the range of reading materials students are expected to read and comprehend in the middle and high school academic curriculum." p. 3"We have come to refer to students' difficulty with reading and understanding subject area texts as a literacy ceiling--a ceiling that limits what students can hope to achieve both in the classroom and in their lives outside of school." p. 5
"There is simply no quick fix for reading difficulties." p. 7
"...an emphasis on engagement and relevance alone can turn into never asking students to read or learn anything they are not already interested in....if teachers take the position that they should 'protect' students from texts...they may contribute...to keeping low-performing students at the tail end of the educational opportunity curve. This tactic may contribute to a widening gulf of unequal access to opportunities in today's increasingly knowledge-based society." p. 10
Unproductive Responses to the Problem
1. Returning to the beginning of reading instruction
Forcing students to start over learning decoding. "...by simply reteaching decoding, educators ignore one of the most powerful resources for reading improvement: the knowledge and cognitive resources that adolescents already use constantly in their lives beyond the school walls." p. 72. Searching for a "Skills-in-a-Box" solution
Using commercial reading programs when that money would be better spent on expanding teachers' knowledge and teaching repertoires. These commercial reading programs are usually unrelated to the reading that takes place in the classroom.3. Talking the text
Teaching content without requiring students to read; reinforcing their dependence on teachers."...without being encouraged and supported to expand the limits of their reading, many students may never be prepared to independently read gatekeeper texts. These are the various texts that permit or deny students access to educational, economic, civic, and cultural opportunities." p. 9
4. Protecting them from boredom
Avoiding assigning texts that won't engage students; students have been found to struggle just as much with engaging texts as they do with boring ones. "If students are to succeed in school and beyond, they must be willing and able to work their way through and make sense of even some poorly written texts." p. 9The Case for Optimism
The authors have developed an approach which allows teachers of all experience levels across different subject areas "to incorporate reading instruction within their subject area classes without adding new curriculum." p. 11 (emphasis added) This approach was developed in two different contexts, one a required course in Academic Literacy for entering 9th graders at an urban high school, the other a network of various subject area teachers at a variety of middle and high schools. The authors call this approach "reading apprenticeship, a method in which the classroom teacher serves as master reader to his or her student apprentices." p. 12 In this approach, teachers make explicit to students their own normally invisible reading processes, empowering the students as their own knowledge grows.Something I found especially valuable was the suggestion that teachers work with the developmental characteristics of adolescents to build a partnership/master reader-apprentice relationship. Examples include: